Made Right with God – Mankind’s Deepest Desire

Being made right with God has been the focus of so many people down through the ages, but the issue is, how can it become a reality in our lives, and how can we know for sure? This question is especially relevant when we see the multitude of answers, often contradictory to one another, that have been proposed. And how do we so often get it wrong when we’ve been given a divine guidebook, the Bible? It is good then at the beginning to give some reason why I would spend the time to write on this subject of salvation, about which more books have likely been written than any other. So many words, so many opinions! But the topic is, of course, critical to our eternal well-being.

In my short time here on earth, I have personally known numbers of people who were most likely true believers in the Lord Jesus but held beliefs that didn’t seem to fully align with the character of the God they desired to follow. Nor did they seem to fully understand the greatness of what God was accomplishing when he created man in his own image. Nor lastly did they truly grasp the comprehensive nature of the salvation our Lord was procuring. It is for these reasons this paper has been written

Very specifically these people would include those who believe God has provided his salvation for a select few he chose in a past eternity with all human choice removed. It would also include those who believe alternatively that in the end, everyone will be saved. There are some also who believe Calvary provided salvation, getting us, as it were, in the door; but then it is up to the individual to complete it by his or her good works. Also, I have talked with some who, despite having trusted in the Lord for salvation, believe it gives no guarantee of heaven since a person could lose his or her faith and be eternally lost or even just choose at some time to walk away from it and no longer believe. There are still others who feel they can believe in Christ yet at the same time still hold worldviews that include animist or pagan beliefs or more recently atheistic philosophies.

We must have a higher view of the greatness of our God beyond what we can even imagine and of the wonder of his creation, particularly of our humanity and especially of the exceeding greatness of his salvation. So I have attempted in this brief apology (a defense of Christian doctrine) to set out the biblical truth of this salvation from the Scriptures themselves as a template for us. And then I will seek to lay over it these other ideas or belief systems to see how they align. Let’s be like the ancient Bereans, as Luke recorded in Acts, who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11, emphasis added).